Michael Bérubé Talk

“The Left At War: Arguing with Ourselves, 2001-03” – A Case Study in the Role of Public Intellectuals

A Talk and Discussion

Friday, October 16th, 3-5pm

Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities Seminar Room, Kresge Centennial Hall,  2-370

Refreshments served

Readings: Introduction and Chapter One from Michael Bérubé, The Left at War (NYU Press, November 2009). For copies, please email Michael Kramer, Research Workshop Convener, mjk@northwestern.edu. Please do not circulate or publish these copies. Dr. Bérubé is generously sharing them with us prior to publication of his book.

More about Michael Bérubé

Michael Bérubé is Paterno Family Professor in Literature and Science, Technology, and Society at Pennsylvania State University, and is the author of several books, including What’s Liberal about the Liberal Arts, Rhetorical Occasions: Essays on Humans and the Humanities, The Employment of English, and Life As We Know It, which was a New York Times notable book and NPR book of the year. He is general editor of NYU Press’s Cultural Front series, has contributed to numerous magazines and newspapers, and writes a popular blog, American Airspace, at michaelberube.com. He is the former director of the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities at the University of Illinois and the author of the forthcoming The Left at War (NYU Press, November 2009).

This event is cosponsored by:

The Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities

The Center for Civic Engagement

The Graduate School

Michael Bérubé Brunch Seminar

“The Utility of the Arts and Humanities” – A Brunch Seminar

Saturday, October 17th, 11am-1pm

Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities Seminar Room, Kresge Centennial Hall,  2-370

Readings:

• Stanley Fish, “Conspiracy Theories 101,” New York Times, 23 July 2006, on the 9/11 Truthers and academic freedom
• Michael Bérubé, “Embrace Your Urge,” a response at the time.
• And a very recent, very brief sally in the Times Higher Education Supplement: Michael Bérubé, “From where I sit – Measuring the unmeasurable,” 30 July 2009.

Brunch served.

More about Michael Bérubé

Michael Bérubé is Paterno Family Professor in Literature and Science, Technology, and Society at Pennsylvania State University, and is the author of several books, including What’s Liberal about the Liberal Arts, Rhetorical Occasions: Essays on Humans and the Humanities, The Employment of English, and Life As We Know It, which was a New York Times notable book and NPR book of the year. He is general editor of NYU Press’s Cultural Front series, has contributed to numerous magazines and newspapers, and writes a popular blog, American Airspace, at michaelberube.com. He is the former director of the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities at the University of Illinois and the author of the forthcoming The Left at War (NYU Press, November 2009).

This events is cosponsored by:

The Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities

The Center for Civic Engagement

The Graduate School

Preliminary Meeting

Monday, October 12th, 3-5pm

Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities Seminar Room,

Kresge Centennial Hall,  2-370

Faculty and graduate students are invited to a preliminary meeting on Monday, October 12th, to discuss interests and future goals for the research workshop.

We will also look toward Michael Bérubé’s visit and the larger questions of engaged humanities scholarship.

Refreshments served.

Readings:

• Michael Bérubé, “The Utility of the Arts and Humanities,” from Rhetorical Occasions: Essays on Humans and the Humanities (University of North Carolina Press, 2006). For a copy, please email Michael Kramer, Research Workshop Convener, mjk@northwestern.edu.
• Michael Bérubé, American Airspace Blog (type “humanities” in to the search field on the advanced search page to browse blog posts on the humanities, or take a look at http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/the_futility_of_the_humanities/; http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/more_on_peter_singer_and_jamie_berube/; http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/principle_of_symmetry_day/)

This event is cosponsored by:

The Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities

The Center for Civic Engagement

The Graduate School

Michael Bérubé @ Northwestern

“The Engaged Humanities Scholar as Public Intellectual” Research Workshop

Invites You to Attend A Talk and Seminar with

Michael Bérubé

(1) “The Left At War: Arguing with Ourselves, 2001-03” – A Case Study in the Role of Public Intellectuals

A Talk and Discussion

Friday, October 16th, 3-5pm

Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities Seminar Room, Kresge Centennial Hall,  2-370

Readings: Introduction and Chapter One from Michael Bérubé, The Left at War (NYU Press, November 2009). For copies, please email Michael Kramer, Research Workshop Convener, mjk@northwestern.edu. Please do not circulate or publish these copies. Dr. Bérubé is generously sharing them with us prior to publication of his book.

Refreshments served.

(2) “The Utility of the Arts and Humanities” – A Brunch Seminar

Saturday, October 17th, 11am-1pm

Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities Seminar Room, Kresge Centennial Hall,  2-370

Readings:

• Stanley Fish, “Conspiracy Theories 101,” New York Times, 23 July 2006, on the 9/11 Truthers and academic freedom
• Michael Bérubé, “Embrace Your Urge,” a response at the time.
• And a very recent, very brief sally in the Times Higher Education Supplement: Michael Bérubé, “From where I sit – Measuring the unmeasurable,” 30 July 2009.

Brunch served.

More about Michael Bérubé

Michael Bérubé is Paterno Family Professor in Literature and Science, Technology, and Society at Pennsylvania State University, and is the author of several books, including What’s Liberal about the Liberal Arts, Rhetorical Occasions: Essays on Humans and the Humanities, The Employment of English, and Life As We Know It, which was a New York Times notable book and NPR book of the year. He is general editor of NYU Press’s Cultural Front series, has contributed to numerous magazines and newspapers, and writes a popular blog, American Airspace, at michaelberube.com. He is the former director of the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities at the University of Illinois and the author of the forthcoming The Left at War (NYU Press, November 2009).

These events are cosponsored by:

The Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities

The Center for Civic Engagement

The Graduate School

Upcoming “Engaged Humanities Scholar as Public Intellectual” events:

Winter 2010 – Issues in the Digital Humanities with David Theo Goldberg, Robert Hariman, and others

Spring 2010 – Online Roundtable on Arts & Cultural Policy with Bill Ivey, Bill Ferris, and others

About

The Engaged Humanities Scholar as Public Intellectual

A 2009-2010 Research Workshop

Cosponsored by the Alice Kaplan Humanities Institute, the Center for Civic Engagement, & The Graduate School

Northwestern University

Overview

This research workshop investigates debates about the humanities and public intellectuals to explore potential connections between specialized scholarly research and civil society as a whole. We pay close attention to the emerging role of digital technologies in mediating between the humanities and communities both on and beyond campus.

Description

Crucial to scholarship in the humanities is the non-instrumentality of our studies: the pursuit of specialized knowledge for knowledge’s sake. However, the place of this kind of humanities scholarship in the changing university setting has long been a topic of concern. Recently, this concern has grown even more fretful. As a February 2009 New York Times article reported, “in this new era of lengthening unemployment lines and shrinking university endowments, questions about the importance of the humanities in a complex and technologically demanding world have taken on new urgency” (Patricia Cohen, “In Tough Times, the Humanities Must Justify Their Worth,” 24 February 2009).

As this quotation suggests, there is a tendency, particularly in the United States, to pose humanities scholarship in opposition to practical knowledge. This research workshop takes a different tack: by investigating debates about the humanities and the definition of the public intellectual, the workshop explores potential connections between specialized research in the humanities and the larger “practical” world of shared civic life.

Our broadest questions include:

• How might we develop more robust relationships between advanced scholarship and shared public life in a complex, modern, mediated world?
• How might scholars participate in society as public intellectuals beyond the lecture circuit and the presence of a few celebrity talking heads in the media?
• How might scholars utilize new communication technologies to shape and contribute to the emerging field of the “digital humanities”?

Nominated graduate and advanced undergraduate students will participate in the HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory) Scholars Program, which will link our research workshop to a consortium of scholars engaged in discovering “alternative modes of learning and research that better address the interconnected, interactive global nature of knowledge today, both in the classroom and beyond” (http://www.hastac.org/about-hastac).

The research workshop itself will consist of a cluster of related events each quarter. Participants can also organize additional events, excursions, and gatherings in connection to their own interests in the research workshop’s themes.

The main events include:

• In the fall, Michael Bérubé will join us to investigate the humanities broadly conceived. Paterno Professor in English Literature and Science, Technology, and Society at Penn State University, author of What’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts, “The Utility of the Arts and Humanities,” and founding director of the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities at the University of Illinois – Champaign-Urbana, Bérubé will participate in a seminar on the idea of the “engaged humanities.” As a case study, Bérubé will also present material from his book The Left at War (NYU Press, forthcoming November 2009), and we will view a number of Iraq War/War on Terror documentaries to consider the dilemmas of engaged scholarship and the role of the public intellectual during recent times.

• In the winter, we will turn to the new field of the digital humanities. David Theo Goldberg, Director of the Humanities Research Institute at the University of California, co-author of The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age, and co-founder of HASTAC, will join us for a talk and discussion, “Networking Knowledge.”

• In the spring/summer, we will investigate the intersection of the arts, culture, and the public through a digital roundtable on “The University and the Expressive Life.” This roundtable, in blog format, will feature scholars, arts administrators, policy analysts, and artists. We will investigate what Bill Ivey calls “expressive life,” — arts and culture broadly conceived — as it relates to humanities scholarship and institutions of higher learning.

Future Goals

Our hope is that the research workshop will continue to serve in the coming years as a laboratory for theorizing and studying the engaged humanities scholar as public intellectual. So too, the workshop might develop further through future cooperative ventures with the Chicago Cultural Alliance, HASTAC, and other institutions. It could eventually offer a curriculum in engaged humanities scholarship that would allow graduate and undergraduate students to connect their research to broader audiences and communities in rewarding ways. And the research workshop might eventually become a published multimedia website that would allow students and faculty to document, support, and investigate humanities scholarship at the Alice Kaplan Institute, the Center for Civic Engagement, on the Northwestern campus, in the Chicago region, and the digital realm.

Workshop Sponsors

The Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities

The Center for Civic Engagement

The Graduate School